Abortion – Archive

When the Supreme Court tossed out certain provisions of a Texas abortion safety law earlier this year, in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt, it did so without considering egregious conditions that exist in Texas abortion facilities, which prompted the passage of the contested legislation in the first place. Operation Rescue now has evidence in the form of public documents that proves 16 of 17 Texas abortion facilities miserably failed recent health and safety inspections conducted by the Department of State Health Services between August 2015, and June 2016. This information shows that Texas abortion facilities continue to pose a significant danger to the lives and health of women. It is now obvious that regulatory reforms are needed to protect women from the serious health dangers posed by Texas abortion facilities. Abortion facilities should be required not only to submit to inspections, but also pass them before Ambulatory Surgical Facility or Abortion Facility licenses are issued or renewed. “As far as I know, these inspection deficiency reports were never submitted to the Supreme Court’s consideration. The reports show us that more oversight is needed for abortion facilities, not less,” said Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue. “We expect conditions at Texas abortion facilities will continue to deteriorate in the wake of the Supreme Court’s errant ruling that protects abortion businesses and their sloppy, corners-cutting practices above the health and welfare of women and their babies.” The most recent inspection reports for each Texas abortion facility were obtained from the Texas Department of State Health Services in response to Operation Rescue’s Freedom of Information Act request. Violations of note within the...

An international pro-life pregnancy care center umbrella group is urging Illinois pregnancy centers to defy a new state law requiring them to participate in abortions, even as those centers and others file suit against the law. In a letter quoted in part by Heartbeat International news publication Pregnancy Help News (PHN), Heartbeat President Jor-El Godsey said this week Illinois’ Senate Bill (SB) 1564 is a “direct assault on our pro-life, pro-health and pro-woman values [that] cannot be allowed to stand.” According to Godsey, “To violate this major tenet of our life-affirming outreach, even if compelled by the government, represents an undeniable breach of ethics. To bow the knee to the state is to deny the very foundation of our mission.” Signed by pro-abortion Republican Governor Bruce Rauner this past July and scheduled to go into effect January 2017, SB 1564 requires pro-life centers to promote, and at times participate in, helping women to get abortions. From the law: (3) If requested by the patient or the legal representative of the patient, the health care facility, physician, or health care personnel shall: (i) refer the patient to, or (ii) transfer the patient to, or (iii) provide in writing information to the patient about other health care providers who they reasonably believe may offer the health care service the health care facility, physician, or health personnel refuses to permit, perform, or participate in because of a conscience-based objection. Lawsuit Filed Against SB 1564 Godsey’s letter came as the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed a lawsuit against Rauner on behalf of “multiple pregnancy care centers, a pregnancy care center network, and a...

The rule is meant to protect the public from communicable diseases, according to a state analysis. An abortion rights activist said state officials have ignored concerns aired this summer. The state said that small facilities can turn to unspecified private businesses to help with extra costs. A proposed state rule requiring the cremation or burial of miscarried and aborted fetuses will not cost medical facilities more money despite concerns from abortion rights advocates, according to an analysis by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. “What we found through our research is that the proposed rules won’t increase total costs for health care facilities,” agency spokeswoman Carrie Williams said. Current rules allow fetal remains, as with other medical tissue, to be ground up and discharged into a sewer system, incinerated, disinfected or handled by some other approved process, followed by disposal in a landfill. The state agency said in its analysis, published Thursday, that the purpose of the rule is the “protection of the health and safety of the public” from communicable diseases. The rule, unchanged from when it was first proposed in July, is now subject to a 30-day public comment period before it goes into effect at a later unspecified date. Abortion advocates have said the proposal, which would change how health care providers dispose of fetal remains that aren’t donated for research, would drive up the cost of an abortion and discourage women from seeking a safe procedure. “The Department of State Health Services did not take seriously, and refuses to respond to, the thousands of public comments, and hours of testimony opposing these rules, that...

You walk into a medical office, but almost immediately something doesn’t seem quite right. Later you learn that poorly trained staff conducted faulty ultrasounds, filed negligent result reports, and injected you with cut-rate drugs that most legitimate doctors refuse to use due to unacceptably high risks. Then you find out that when you were told more efficient drugs weren’t available in the U.S., it was an outright lie. Such betrayal and more is experienced daily by women who are lured into Steven Chase Brigham’s American’s Women’s Services abortion facilities. But for one woman, the consequences of Brigham’s substandard staff, policies, and practices will impact her world, and that of her son, for the rest of their lives. Court documents obtained by Operation Rescue show that abortionist Steven Chase Brigham and his associates Vikram Kaji and Mansour Panah have been hit with a default judgement of $6.5 million in a malpractice case involving a failed methotrexate abortion on Christy O’Connell. While that may sound like a lot of money, the cost of providing life-time care for her son, who was severely disabled by the abortion drug Methotrexate, will be at least that, or more. When O’Connell first filed her civil suit in Federal Court, Brigham, Kaji, and Panah never bothered to hire attorneys or respond to the complaint. They simply ignored it and allowed it to default. Iris Dominy, who actually conducted the methotrexate abortion on Christy O’Connell in July 2012, at Brigham’s “Frederick Primary Care,” also known as American Women’s Services in Frederick, Maryland, was not listed on the default judgement and was the only one of the...

Late Friday [19 Aug 2016], it was announced that leading United Kingdom abortion agency Marie Stopes International will suspend a significant percent of abortion procedures following a surprise inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the independent regulator of health and social care in England. The CQC and the National Health Service (NHS) announced that the abortion agency must suspend surgical abortion procedures for certain groups of women after a CQC regulator raised concerns regarding “the provider’s corporate and clinical governance arrangements and patient safety protocols in specific areas.” Following the surprise inspection, Marie Stopes had suspended abortion for women under the age of 18 as well as “vulnerable groups of women.” Additional suspensions have occurred for abortions under general anesthetic or conscious sedation as well as all surgical abortions in their Norwich abortion clinic. The UK’s The Telegraph newspaper reports that staff competence was a primary reason for the CQC’s concerns. According to The Telegraph, “The CQC said it could not be sure that staff had adequate levels of training and competence to administer sedatives and general anaesthetic. It also said it had immediate concerns about issues of consent.” The government has also informed Marie Stopes International that they will not be given approval for more clinics until the CQC is satisfied that its concerns have been fully addressed. National medical director at NHS England, Prof. Sir Bruce Keogh, stated: “This will be an anxious time for those women affected and we are taking immediate action to ensure everybody involved has access to the appropriate confidential advice and services.” It is encouraging news that the CQC and the...

Abortion during the late teen and early adult years raises a woman’s risk of mental health problems and may be linked to almost one in ten cases of these women’s mental disorders, a new study says. A sociologist at CUA found that the risks of a mental disorder with abortion far exceeded the risks from involuntary loss of pregnancy. “Evidence from the United States confirms previous findings from Norway and New Zealand that, unlike other pregnancy outcomes, abortion is consistently associated with a moderate increase in risk of mental health disorders during late adolescence and early adulthood,” said the study’s abstract. The study, conducted by sociology professor Donald Paul Sullins of CUA, was published July 22, 2016 in the peer-reviewed Sage Open Medicine journal — http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2813546 After adjusting for demographic differences and other factors, the study found that abortion during these years elevated a woman’s risk of mental health disorder by 45%. “One-eleventh of the prevalence of mental disorders examined over the period were attributable to abortion,” the study’s abstract said. The study sought to examine any links between pregnancy outcomes like birth, abortion or miscarriage and mental health outcomes for U.S. women during the transition to adulthood. It drew on a national study of 8,005 women that surveyed them three times at average ages of 15, 22 and 28. Involuntary pregnancy loss was associated with a 24% elevated risk of mental disorder, while childbirth was “weakly associated” with reduced risk of mental disorder. Students for Life of America said the study showed the need for better data about the risks of abortion. “Abortion activists have repeatedly denounced attempts...

A few months after AmeriCorps was caught illegally using taxpayer dollars to help women get abortions, the public service agency announced an end to its problematic healthcare program, according to Jezebel. In April, news broke that some volunteers in the taxpayer-funded program were working with abortion businesses in direct violation of the program’s federal grant requirements, according to The Hill. According to the investigation, six AmeriCorps volunteers provided emotional support and transportation to women seeking abortions at a community health center in New York City. The abortion work was organized through the National Association of Community Health Centers, which oversees AmeriCorps, the report states. In May, the health centers association and AmeriCorps leaders faced an investigative hearing in front of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce to examine the violations and consider what action to take. Now, the health centers association is shutting down the AmeriCorps healthcare program, Buzzfeed reports. The program, Community HealthCorps, trained thousands of members to volunteer at health clinics across the nation, according to the report. Members worked in 17 states and Washington, D.C., educating asthma and diabetes patients, reminding older patients to take their medicine, giving HIV tests and performing other tasks, the report states. Here’s more from the article: Community HealthCorps “was our longest-running health care program,” CNCS spokesperson Samantha Warfield told BuzzFeed News, confirming that NACHC failed to secure renewal of its grant this year. The grant has given $30 million to the nonprofit over the last five years. More than 400 AmeriCorps volunteers, who receive a small stipend and student loan forgiveness in return for their service, are...

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) struck down a Texas law (H.B.2) that sought to protect women’s health by requiring abortion clinics follow minimum standards for ambulatory surgical centers and that abortionists have surgical privileges at a hospital within 30 minutes of the abortion clinic. In a 5-3 decision, SCOTUS decided in Whole Woman’s Health V. Hellerstedt that the Texas law posed “[u]nnecessary health regulations that have the pur­pose or effect of presenting a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion impose an undue burden on the right”. The case was filed by an abortion business operating in Texas. In his dissenting opinion, Justice Alito, with Chief Justice Roberts concurring, expressed disbelief that the five justices opposed sections of H.B. 2 that imposed reasonable safety measures on abortion sites. Justice Alito wrote, “Provisions that are indisputably constitutional–for example, provisions that require facilities performing abortions to follow basic fire safety measures–are stricken from the books. There is no possible justification for this collateral damage. The Court’s patent refusal to apply well-established law in a neutral way is indefensible and will undermine public confidence in the Court as a fair and neutral arbiter.” Justice Thomas in a separate dissent quoted the late Justice Scalia on the pro-abortion leaning of the Court, “Today the Court strikes down two state statutory provi­sions in all of their applications, at the behest of abortion clinics and doctors. That decision exemplifies the Court’s troubling tendency “to bend the rules when any effort to limit abortion, or even to speak in opposition to abortion, is at issue.” Stenberg v. Carhart, 530 U. S. 914,...

The Supreme Court of Justice in Mexico decided 3 to 1 to reject a proposal to overturn federal law and declare that the criminalization of abortion is unconstitutional and that women have the right to make their own decisions on abortion. Currently abortion is illegal on the federal level with a rape exception. Three justices rejected the attempt by Justice Arturo Zaldívar to change the federal criminal code; he argued that the restriction of abortion ‘violates women’s rights to personal development, sexual and reproductive health, and freedom from discrimination’. The ruling centered on the case of Margarita Pino Salazar who was denied an abortion at a federal hospital and instead had it performed in a private health facility. Zaldívar attempted to have declared as unconstitutional two provisions of the Federal Penal Code that deal with the criminalization of abortion citing the case of Salazar but the fact that the articles did not apply to her helped to weaken the case. It was the first time that the Court has considered the penalization of abortion on the federal level.Pro-life advocates celebrated the decision. An official tweet from the Court suggests that there will be future considerations on abortion: “La @SCJN decidió no pronunciarse, por el momento, sobre la interrupción del embarazo en hospitales federales.” Translation: The @SCJN declined to rule, for the moment, on the termination of pregnancy in federal hospitals. [30 June 2016, PNCI email,...

The Lancet, known for its medical journal, and highly esteemed at the United Nations, has released a new report, “Our future: a Lancet commission on adolescent health and well-being”, through which it addresses the health of adolescents, the group who “will be the policy makers of 2030”, the year the SDGs conclude. The report begins by acknowledging that today’s youth are the “largest generation of 10 to 24 year olds in human history” reflecting concerns by population control elites for the reproductive potential of what is called the “youth bulge”. Access to abortion is cited throughout the report and listed under various categories. Abortion is described as an ‘essential health-care response’ for all girls with the report declaring, “Health services should provide all essential health-care responses, including modern contraception and safe abortion regardless of age, marital, and socioeconomic status; providers should have the skills to provide confidential and non-judgmental care.” Abortion is included as ‘accessible preventive health care’ which is described as: “Care should include guarantees of preventive care to all sexually active adolescents, maternal health care when necessary, and access to affordable modern contraception, particularly long-acting reversible contraceptives; if unwanted pregnancy does occur provide access to legal, safe abortion.” Abortion is also listed as a ‘health service intervention’ detailed as: “Health service interventions involve the provision of information and counselling, contraception, prenatal and postnatal care and delivery, abortion services and post-abortion care, treatment and prevention of sexually transmitted infections, HIV testing and counselling, and care for sexual and gender-based violence.” PNCI notes that it is regrettable that the Lancet commission does not hesitate in promoting access to abortion,...

In 2011 alone, abortion related complications affected 26,500 women and over 3000 women needed hospitalization; but the abortion industry has opposed Common sense health standards at every level in every State in America, and on June 27th 2016 the abortion industry received the highest court in the land’s approval to continue to operate on unsuspecting women in the usual substandard and sometimes deadly fashion. According to a report just released by Family Research Council, “the U.S. Supreme Court announced its 5-3 decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, striking down Texas’ H.B. 2 commonsense regulation and enforcement of basic health standards in abortion facilities. The Texas law required that abortion facilities be held to the same standard as surgical centers and that abortionists must have admitting privileges at a local hospital not further than thirty miles from the abortion facility.” Cincinnati Right to Life points out that “The Court’s decision affects states beyond Texas, including Ohio, as currently 29 states prescribe health and safety standards for abortion facilities, and 15 states require abortionists to maintain admitting privileges with a local hospital or a written patient transfer agreement with a doctor with such privileges to ensure knowledgeable care should an emergency occur” “The Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt decision is yet another example of the mess that our country is in, a mess that will only be overcome when we fall on our knees and ask for God’s forgiveness for allowing this slaughter to continue on our watch. For at least a decade many in the prolife movement have placed their trust in the courts as they have tried to...

Many different factors are playing a part in the record number of abortion businesses closing all across the country. New abortion regulations, sidewalk counseling and educational efforts such as 40 Days for Life, pregnancy resource centers and more have contributed to the decline. But another factor also is having a strong influence – a lack of doctors willing to perform the deadly procedures. A new report from PBS Houston draws attention to the abortion industry’s struggle to find employees. Texas had 48 abortion doctors a few years ago, but now it’s down to 28, according to the report. Abortionist Bernard Rosenfeld is one of those 28. He is 74 years old and plans to retire from his Houston, Texas abortion practice soon after more than 30 years in business. He told PBS that he is struggling to find another abortionist to take his place. “I’ve talked to some doctors, but none of them are interested in the political consequences of providing abortions,” Rosenfeld said. He blamed pro-life protesters for scaring doctors away from the abortion practice. He said some protesters have picketed his house and left bullets in the abortion business parking lot. Rosenfeld isn’t the only one struggling to find a replacement. A 2016 Bloomberg analysis found that a number of U.S. abortion facilities closed recently because they either could not find a doctor willing to do abortions or the doctor they had was deemed “unfit to practice.” The PBS reporter Carrie Feibel found that many Texas medical schools and residency programs did not even want to talk about students being trained to do abortions. OB-GYN programs must...

The first-ever Pro-Life Women’s Conference took place in June 2016 in Dallas. We need to understand how far we must go — and what we must do — to achieve success by 2020. The Guttmacher Institute’s new report reveals things have gotten worse over the last eight years for the most vulnerable. Among women who are seeking abortions: — 75% are the poor and working poor, — 66% are pursuing post-secondary degrees (which could lift them out of poverty), — 59% are already mothers. Women deserve better! As we count down to the 2020 Centennial Celebration of the 19th Amendment, help us fulfill the unrealized dream of Susan B. Anthony and other first wave feminists by systematically eliminating the root causes** that drive women to abortion in three key areas: 1. Education 2. Workplace 3. Paternal support Abortion IS a reflection that we have not met the needs of women. Help us end the feminization of poverty that drives women to abortion. Help MAKE WOMEN’S HISTORY. But first, here’s a lesson from history. Susan B. Anthony, the Quaker teacher turned suffrage leader, owned The Revolution. Her newspaper went bankrupt when she and co-editor Elizabeth Cady Stanton depended on one donor. After they passed away, Alice Paul assumed the leadership. She knew that approaching donors was key to success. Fourteen years after Anthony died, Paul successfully led the suffrage movement to achieve the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed all women in the United States the right to vote and soon after wrote the original Equal Rights Amendment. When the ’70s women’s movement embraced abortion, Paul called it the “ultimate in the...

Among the various pro-life bills introduced at the state level, Oklahoma’s recent plan to start teaching fetal development in public schools deserves far more attention than it’s gotten so far. Banning certain abortion procedures, regulating abortionists, defunding Planned Parenthood, etc., are all important for their own sake; but each of them, and the long-term goal of ending abortion for good, are ultimately too dependent on public opinion changing on its own. Although America is opposed to abortion on balance (meaning pro-life politicians needn’t fear being more pro-active about it), self-identification as “pro-life” and “pro-choice” still fluctuates back and forth too often, without signs of a lasting, long-term spike on the horizon. We cannot simply wait for the public to decide on its own to end abortion. Education and outreach efforts from pro-life activists are valuable, but can only go so far. The key is to reach the assumptions of people, particularly future generations, who don’t already agree with, aren’t on course to cross paths with us on their own, and aren’t interested enough in abortion to proactively research it for themselves. Oklahoma has the key. Their education bill is a model for what should be one of the top state-level legislative priorities of every pro-life organization in the country. Think about it: simply requiring public schools to clearly educate students on clear, objective, undeniable facts of human biology, which are a bedrock part of one of the core subjects, should be one of the easiest sells in the world for any halfway-competent politician. Religious indoctrination? No, this is basic science. What about rape cases or Planned Parenthood? We’re just...

2:30 minute Video – http://www.lifenews.com/2016/06/22/after-discovering-down-syndrome-jerome-lejeune-was-upset-aborted-targeted-children-with-it/ It is August 1969 in San Francisco and Professor Jerome Lejeune is addressing the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics. Ten years earlier he had discovered the genetic cause of Down Syndrome, when he saw under his microscope in a Paris laboratory the third little mark on the 21st chromosome. In 1962 he received the Kennedy Award from the hands of President John F Kennedy for his work with handicapped children. But the drama of his life was that his discovery of trisomy 21 would lead to a medical holocaust, national health systems giving huge funds to track down and eliminate these children before they could be born. Invited to America to receive the highest distinction in genetics for his work, the William Allen Memorial Award, Lejeune decided to use this occasion to speak out in defence of “his patients” — the children and their parents who already came from all over the world to seek his advice and help in Paris. Colleagues tried to persuade him just to address the scientific questions. But Lejeune had given months of reflection to his speech. He had counted the cost. In his soft, very precise voice he said : “For thousands of years, medicine has striven to fight for life and health against disease and death. Any reversal of this order would entirely change medicine itself.” That night he wrote to his wife, “Today I lost my Nobel Prize.” As he had foreseen, Lejeune was ostracised by the scientific, medical and political elite in France. His research funds were withdrawn. In the 1960s...

Students for Life has a new video out that examines the question of whether aborting an unborn baby is necessary to save a woman’s life. Tina Whittington, executive vice president of Students for Life, walks pro-lifers through the question in the short video. She begins by explaining that both the mother and her unborn child must be considered as separate patients who deserve treatment and care. “When it comes to recommended medical procedures, the answer is that we can perform any action that is intended to save lives, but also does not directly or intentionally kill anyone, like an abortion,” Whittington said in the video. For example, in some situations, an early delivery could be scheduled to eliminate the risk to the mother without directly killing her baby, according to the video. With an ectopic pregnancy, the baby could be removed from the fallopian tube in a procedure that saves the mother’s life and does not intentionally kill the child. Unlike abortion, the intention of these procedures are to save as many lives as possible. Medical experts also say that aborting an unborn child is not necessary to save the life of the mother. During an international symposium in 2012 in Dublin, a group of Irish medical professionals concluded that “direct abortion is not medically necessary to save the life of a mother,” LifeNews reported. “Irish Obstetricians and Gynaecologists have previously pointed out that treatment for conditions such as ectopic pregnancy are not considered abortion by doctors, yet misinformation in regard to this abounds in public debate. The Symposium clarifies that direct abortion is never medically necessary to save...

G7 Leaders Commit to Advancing Sexual and Reproductive Health Services Leaders of the world’s most powerful countries are meeting this week at the 2016 G7 Summit in Ise-Shima, Japan. The 2016 Summit, like previous G7 meetings, has focused on some of the most pressing issues in the modern world. Items discussed included China’s bogus claim to the entire South China Sea, the Syrian refugee crisis, ways to rebuild a war-torn Ukraine, and formulating a strategy to defeat ISIS. But now G7 leaders are committing to advancing “sexual and reproductive health, rights, and services,” a term that, for pro-abortion activists, is synonymous with abortion on the international stage. A group of lawmakers pushed for access to abortion and “sexual and reproductive health” to be included as a topic of concern at this year’s Summit. A recent conference sponsored by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) paid for a gaggle of pro-abortion lawmakers to assemble in Japan to pressure the G7 to support of radical pro-abortion policy. The so-called “Global Conference of Parliamentarians on Population and Development Toward the 2016 Ise-Shima Summit” (GCPPD 2016) took place in Tokyo on April 26-27. The 100 or so left-leaning politicians in attendance predictably called upon world leaders to repeal laws in defense of life and increase access to abortion. The GCPPD 2016 declaration calls on the G7 to “remove legal barriers” to abortion, and to interpret existing abortion laws to ensure the maximum availability of abortion: Remove legal barriers preventing women and adolescent girls from access to safe abortion, including revising restrictions within existing abortion laws, and...

In her responding brief opposing the defense motion to quash the tainted indictments, Anderson makes one more startling admission. She acknowledged that her office violated the law when it made public Daleiden and Merritt’s indictments before they were served or placed in custody or under bond. An attorney representing Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, Josh Schaffer, has admitted that he pressured the Harris County District Attorney’s office to refocus a grand jury investigation away from his client and onto pro-life journalists David Daleiden and his associate, Sandra Merritt, of the Center for Medical Progress. Schaeffer also confessed that Assistant District Attorney Sunni Mitchell did an “end around” the State Attorney General Ken Paxton in order to share sealed video evidence with Planned Parenthood. The grand jury later returned indictments against Daleiden and Merritt. Shaffer stated publicly that he was informed by the District Attorney’s office that no investigation of Planned Parenthood ever took place. The admissions came in an affidavit filed as an exhibit by Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson to a brief responding to the defendants’ motion to quash the indictments against Daleiden and Merritt. SIGN THE PETITION: Drop the Charges Against David Daleiden and Charge Planned Parenthood After the release last year of undercover videos taken by Daleiden, lead investigator for the Center for Medical Progress, and his associate, Susan Merritt, Paxton ordered Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson to launch an investigation into allegations that Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast (PPGC) was illegally selling aborted baby remains for profit and altering abortion procedures to ensure that marketable organs would be available for sale. At the “suggestion” of...

Yesterday [25 May 2016], the Ohio Senate approved legislation that would require abortion businesses to treat the bodies of aborted babies humanely after the abortion. The bill came about after Planned Parenthood abortion sites were caught dumping aborted babies in landfills. The abortion business pays to have aborted babies “steam cooked” before dumping them in landfills. The bill requires that the remains of aborted children are given humane burial or cremation and increases informed consent by requiring full disclosure to women pursuing abortions of their options for the aborted baby’s treatment. The legislation was introduced in December when Attorney General Mike DeWine revealed Planned Parenthood to be sending aborted children’s remains to landfills. “The more our society learns about the horrors of abortion, the more we are obligated to respond with courage and compassion,” said Kayla Atchison, director of external affairs for Ohio Right to Life. “The Ohio Senate is fulfilling that obligation with their efforts to shine a light on the abortion industry’s inhumane practices, and their work to preserve the dignity of the unborn child. We thank Chairman Coley and the Senate Government Oversight and Reform Committee for their leadership and work to preserve the dignity of the unborn child.” “With careful attention to detail and sincere compassion for all victims of abortion, the Ohio Senate is leading the state’s efforts to recognize and respect the dignity of every human person,” said Kayla Atchison, director of external affairs for Ohio Right to Life. “While we know there is nothing dignified in the act of abortion itself, we believe that this legislation is necessary for ensuring respect for...

Comment: There are many reasons for premature birth, one of which is previous abortion. Abortion can weaken the cervix, so that as the baby gets bigger, the weakened cervix cannot stay contracted, and the mother gives birth too early. There are now over 140 published studies showing a link between abortion and premature birth. Thus, one way to avoid preterm labor & delivery is to avoid abortion. A new paper from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Pediatrics finds that among premature babies born at 22 to 23 weeks LMP (20-21 weeks post-fertilization) who are given “active” care, 61 to 71 percent survive. This is an even higher survival rate than reported last year by the New England Journal of Medicine, fresh evidence that the “viability standard” is a quickly moving target. The publication came one day after details emerged in the case of a baby being born alive during a failed abortion in Phoenix, AZ. An abortion facility employee can be heard on recently released 911 tapes saying: “The fetus is breathing so we need care for it now…We can’t provide that care except for oxygen and we’re trying to keep the fetus stable until someone arrives.” “A baby was born alive at 21 weeks and rather than being rushed to the NICU, he suffered, awaiting medical care the abortion clinic was incapable of providing,” said Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser. She added: “That this child could die with so little national attention speaks to the callous state of our laws on abortion. The status quo espoused by Hillary Clinton – legal abortion-on-demand,...